Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

Until now, Canadian Gordon Lightfoot - the most folk-oriented of the singer-songwriters who made it big on the pop charts in the `70s - has never had a single disc retrospective of his work that was even remotely worthy of him. His prior collections on Reprise (1975's Gord's Gold and, especially, 1988's Gord's Gold 2) were filled with inferior remakes of many of his most celebrated recordings. Complete Greatest Hits is a vast improvement over those sets, with the original versions of all of his best-known songs. It leads off with six recordings from his years at United Artists (1965-1969). While Lightfoot's warm, deep voice and engaging melodies were present even on these early efforts, it was others who initially charted with his songs, such as Peter, Paul, & Mary with the enclosed "Early Morning Rain" and "For Lovin' Me." In 1970, Lightfoot signed with Warner Brothers subsidiary Reprise (highlights of his twenty-plus years at this label make up the remaining fourteen tracks found here). Soon after signing with Reprise, Lightfoot began to make a name for himself as a singer with the introspective top five hit "If You Could Read My Mind." He also continued to write songs that were popularized by others, such as the enclosed "Cotton Jenny" for fellow Canadian Anne Murray. In the early 70s, singer-songwriters became the rage in popular music and Lightfoot certainly contributed to the movement's success with the big hits "Sundown," "Carefree Highway," and "Rainy Day People." His 1976 six minute-plus epic "Wreck Of The Edmund Fitzgerald" would prove to be Lightfoot's artistic peak as well as his final major commercial success, although he would continue to make some fine music during the rest of the `70s. Lightfoot's `80s output is represented here by the set's two most generic, forgettable recordings: "Baby Step Back" and "Stay Loose." The compilers of this collection would have been better off ditching those tracks and selecting a couple of the countless gems not included from his United Artists tenure, such as the breezy "Did She Mention My Name" or "Black Day in July," an intensely hypnotic account of the '67 race riots in Detroit (get the double-disc United Artists Collection for a thorough overview of this period). Complete Greatest Hits concludes on a positive note with "Restless," a 1993 ode that finds Lightfoot descriptively ruminating about looking forward to the future while not forgetting the past. It reminds us of what a special observer and documenter he has been of life's events, both monumental and trivial.